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by Stenzel 2706 days ago
MIDI is great, and I am so thankful that they had the foresight to require a mandatory opto-coupler in the input to avoid ground loops of interconnected gear. Even today, very few devices have a comparable insulation in their USB connection.
2 comments

On my guitar pedalboard, I tried to be clever once and I hooked all of my digital pedals with a usb hub to a main connector. Horrible ground loops and digital noise was introduced. Does anyone make an electrically isolated usb hub?
A bit harder for USB, because of the power it supplies. USB is also not connected in loops, where MIDI will form loops with audio connections.